Abstract

The article analyses A. Boissier’s image Les Amants électrisés par l’amour in view of the larger question of how something is able to arouse interest on first
sight, but also in repeat encounters. Highlighting the engraving’s didactic iconography,
the article shows how it revolves around the solution to a riddle and uses a typical
design of the Enlightenment to show the uncovering of a deception. As such, the engraving
is part of a long tradition of showing (supposedly) supernatural events, more specifically
the tradition of Magia naturalis. At the same time, the image contains dissonances and can be seen to simulate suspense
through dichotomies that can be identified as antagonistic historical concepts. The
article furthermore discusses the amalgamation of love and electricity in contemporary
discourses and addresses the temporal dimension of the engraving, which constructs
itself out of an absence, out of something yet unseen.